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Battle of Windermere
The Battle of Windermere was the fifth major engagement in the Flettan Rebellion of 1106 and the second fought between rebels under Greg West and forces under Sean Rosen, Glenn Flaker and Richard Zimmerman belonging to the Army of Regina. It took place on 7 May 1107, five days after the lopsided Battle of Anthracite. Prelude After the Battle of Anthracite, the Army of Regina was splintered badly. Sean Rosen, who was unlucky enough to be pinned against the fort of Greg West by the two other divisions, was down to less than a third of his initial force. Richard Zimmerman and Glenn Flaker were almost badly damaged and were in a broken retreat to their base in Windermere. They had two more divisions nearby, led by Max Grafton and Lance Howarth, but they were unable to send word of their situation to either one of them until the 4th, two days after the conclusion of Anthracite. Rick Duthie was supporting their efforts as best he could with his cavalry, but rebel cavalry under Jason Horsley was keeping Duthie from properly doing so. On the retreat to Windermere, Horsley had pushed the routing army faster than it could stand marching through his harassment and forced them into exhaustion by day two in the five day march to Windermere. West looked to capitalize on this state of affairs and at 15:00 on 2 May, three hours after the battle had ended, he deposited the dead and wounded onto the villagers at Anthracite and began a steady march to Windermere. His goal was to shatter the three divisions of Rosen, Zimmerman and Flaker before Grafton and Howarth or the nearby Army of Appalachia could respond. The three broken divisions reached Windermere late on 6 May, absolutely exhausted. They had only a two hour head start on West, but had pushed much harder than West was. They also had stragglers wandering into their camp well into the night and into the next day. West arrived at 19:30 the following day and immediately deployed. Grafton and Howarth were both two days' march away, but Duthie was camped about fifteen minutes' march away. He had recalled his cuirassiers from Grafton's and Howarth's line to try to give Horsley a tougher challenge than he'd had at Anthracite. Armies The same armies squared off as at Anthracite. West led the rebel infantry with Herakleios Metaxas and Dan Anthony, which had barely lost anything from its original force, with only Metaxas being below 4,800 swordsmen and only West being below 2,000 skirmishes. Horsley still commanded the cavalry, which was down to 7,400. The only significant difference for this army is that Ross Jackson was lacking in his artillery contingency, with only four ballistae. Even these were only present because Horsley had allowed Jackson to use a few horses from the cavalry pull the ballistae that Jackson could slap wheels onto in time. In total, the rebels had 36,020 men and 4 artillery pieces present. At the last minute, Rosen, Zimmerman and Flaker had consolidated their regiments to form as many full strength melee regiments as possible. They had enough swordsmen left for six regiments and pikemen for two. The sword regiments were split evenly between the three and the pikes were split between Rosen and Zimmerman. Each kept their skirmisher regiments as they had not been damaged as badly at Anthracite. Duthie had brought in his cuirassiers, which gave him 9,000 extra cavalry to face Horsley, along with the 6,100 survivors of Anthracite. This gave the Army of Regina a total of 74,512 total soldiers. Battle West had caught the Reginan divisions just as they had finished merging their regiments and thus gave them no time to move to a more defensible position. Rosen had made a move to cross the river that ran through Windermere and try to turn the fight into a bridge battle, but a hesitation from Flaker, who wanted to march toward some hills to the west, took that option away. With Duthie's cavalry, however, an open field was not necessarily a bad option itself. Both Duthie's and Horsley's faced the difficulty of a lack of leadership. Both Duthie and Horsley themselves were excellent commanders, but their middle command relied heavily on having the strong leader to guide their moves. The battle began with a game of cat-and-mouse between the two cavalries as they each had two flanks of infantry to guard and one unit of cavalry with which to do it. Duthie had considerably more cavalry to work with, but his cuirassiers were liable to become exhausted quickly with their heavy armour. Another factor in the battle was the lack of light, as it was only an hour-and-a-half until sunset when the battle lines were drawn. A broken retreat in the dark of night could easily cause routing troops to shatter, especially the Reginan troops that were already demoralized and who would be losing their base full of supplies. First phase At 19:45, the rebel skirmishers pushed forward to start taking shots at the Reginan skirmishers while Jackson unlimbered and began firing at 19:50. Jackson's target was Duthie's cuirassiers sitting behind the middle of the line while they waited for Horsley's cavalry to be pinned down. The damage caused by only four ballistae was not catastrophic, but the cuirassiers were pulled back anyway to prevent unnecessary losses. This gave Horsley an opportunity to isolate Duthie's light cavalry and he acted immediately. While the Reginan skirmishers were busy firing at the rebel skirmishers, Horsley moved his cavalry to the Reginan left and feinted a charge toward the infantry flank with half of his force. Duthie saw Horsley's charge and responded by moving in to pin him down, but Horsley's first half quit charging and veered off back toward their own infantry while Horsley sent his second half forward. Duthie could see he was being sandwiched in, but continued on anyway, redirecting his charge into Horsley's second wave. Duthie himself pulled away to call forward the cuirassiers, only to discover they had their backs turned and were walking away because of the ballista fire. Metaxas, who was on the rebel right, had seen what Horsley was doing and moved his line forward. He now sent his pikes forward to interfere with the cavalry fight with his swords in close support. This drew forward West and Anthony in turn, who could not see the fight on their right, but wanted to stay even with Metaxas. This also allowed Jackson to move up and continue firing on the retreating cuirassiers. Rosen's division was now able to easily flank Anthony and moved to do so. Zimmerman in the centre moved forward to support him and pin West and Anthony down in the centre. Flaker, meanwhile, was moving into the cavalry fight. Metaxas saw him coming and moved his swords forward to slow him down and give Horsley the opportunity to win the cavalry fight. Anthony saw his left being turned and pulled his units back and to the right. West pulled right with him and saw the situation Metaxas was in. Hoping to break up that fight quickly, he quickly marched toward it and piled his swords into it. At 20:30, the battlefield had nearly turned ninety degrees. On the Reginan right, Rosen's back was now facing the river and he had yet to catch up to and engage the retreating Anthony. In the centre, Zimmerman had begun to move left toward the cavalry fight instead of zoning out Anthony. In the brawl on the Reginan left, Flaker's infantry was being detroyed piecemeal by the combined skirmishing efforts of West's and Metaxas's crossbows as well as West's pikemen and Metaxas's swordsmen, who were simply walking along either of Flaker's flank. Duthie was in the process of chasing after his heavy cavalry while his two regiments of light cavalry were being obliterated by Metaxas's pikes, West's swords and Horsley's cavalry. At 20:35, the Reginan light cavalry had broken, but had little room to escape the mob of rebels. Their horses were being cut open by West's swords while they were being stabbed by Metaxas's pikes. Horsley's cavalry was able to fight very defensively and ended up trading only a few casualties for the destruction of two enemy regiments. Flaker, unable to get his division split in half to fight the infantry on his flanks, decided to pull back into the camp itself. Horsley pursued them a short distance to inflict a few more casualties before withdrawing to rest his cavalry. With Flaker withdrawing, Zimmerman halted his advance and pulled away as well. West and Metaxas held station, reforming their lines. West began marching south, now the rebel left, to support Anthony, which forced Rosen away. At 20:50, the battlefield was quiet again with both armies resting but trading skirmish fire. Second phase Duthie was now in control of the cuirassiers and held them well back of the line to keep them safe from ballista fire, but kept them just close enough to be able to respond to threats on either flank. However, Horsley noticed that there were no gaps in the Reginan line and told West to move Anthony and Metaxas further to the flanks. At 21:05, two minutes before sunset, Horsley again charged, this time through the gap in the rebel line between West and Metaxas. The rebel skirmishers, though outnumbered, had been winning the skirmish fight. The Reginan skirmishers were exhausted and did not have the morale to make up for it. Horsley had timed his charge to begin as most of them had fired their shots and between the long windlass reload time and the sight of cavalry bearing down of them, the Reginan skirmishers began to waver. Rosen began to move his spears to intercept the charge, but Horsley had directed his charge toward the Reginan left to avoid Rosen and hit Flaker. As before, Metaxas followed him with infantry. The battlefield was now almost completely dark. As much for visibility to keep firing as anything, Jackson fired a couple of flaming shots and began setting tents on fire. However, he didn't fire anywhere near Horsley, leaving that half of the battle in complete darkness. West could not see how well Horsley was faring, but he caught a glimpse of Duthie charging his heavy cavalry and began moving his infantry up. Metaxas got there first and found Flaker's infantry had vanished completely as soon as they'd been hit by Horsley. Duthie's cuirassiers found them fairly quickly by running over them attempting to get to Horsley. This slowed them down enough to allow Horsley a gap to get behind the Reginan line. In frustration, Duthie ordered his cuirassier to begin cutting a path through their own infantry, but they were too late to catch Horsley and had to withdraw before Metaxas's pikemen. Zimmerman shortly became aware of his flank suddenly coming under threat and began moving troops that direction. West soon move in with his swords and charged Zimmerman's centre, preventing him from rotation his line to face the new threat and he instead had to pull troops from his right to run behind the lines to face Metaxas. Rosen began pulling back to move to the Reginan left as well as to get away from the flaming tents. Jackson responded by firing flaming shot into the middle of the camp, setting another clump of tents on fire before firing standard into the melee. Anthony moved forward to follow Rosen and turn the Reginan left. Though they still outnumbered the rebels, the Reginan infantry was suddenly in danger of being encircled. Rosen attempted to stop his line to face Anthony, but in the chaos of marching right next to the noisy battle in what was Zimmerman's centre, one of his regiments kept marching to the far left. Somewhere in the darkness of the camp, Horsley managed to get behind Duthie's heavy cavalry and fire off a pointblank cranequin volley and withdrawing before Duthie could properly respond. Duthie instead moved his cavalry around Anthony's flank while Horsley's cavalry reloaded. Anthony managed to spot the gleam of the Reginan armour and turned around his pikes to face them. However, that left him open for Rosen's swordsmen to charge his own swords while Rosen outnumbered him. As they did, Horsley led a rear charge into some of Zimmerman's troops, breaking them and freeing West's swordsmen. Rosen saw his rear being threatened now and pushed to envelope Anthony and allow Duthie to enter the fight. Once a few of Anthony's pikemen had been backstabbed, the rest turned to face Rosen's swarm. Duthie took the opportunity and smashed into Anthony's rear. Horsley now had to bail Anthony out of his situation and pushed his tiring hussars around the fight to fire their cranequins into Duthie's rear and then charge in. This gave West time to charge his swordsmen into the back of Rosen's troops. At 21:40, Rosen's infantry shattered from the pressure and West and Anthony began piling onto Duthie's cuirassiers. Jackson continued firing into the melee with standard shot and was taking down a number of Duthie's men and only a couple of Jackson's. On the opposite flank, the battle was utter chaos as the field was nearly pitch black. Both lines were in complete disarray. At 21:50, Metaxas called a retreat to reform, but neither side knew who was giving the order. Both sides retreated, but the Reginans had no leader present to halt the retreat; Zimmerman had left the battlefield with the troops broken in the centre, not knowing that it was his troops and not Flaker's fighting on the flank. At 21:55, Duthie finally was overwhelmed and pulled back, fighting his way out of the mob. Few of his cuirassiers managed to make it out with him, as they suffered the same fate as the light cavalry earlier in the day. Many of them surrendered, which the exhausted rebels gladly accepted and the fight was over at 22:00. Aftermath The battle was another decisive tactical victory for the rebels. Anthony's division had suffered somewhat, but the rebellion had only lost 3424 (1269 killed, 2155 severely wounded) total, of which 562 were cavalrymen. The Army of Regina had lost 27,370 during the battle, including over 11,000 of Duthie's cavalry. The exact number of killed is unknown, as neither side was present long enough to count the men who would die of their injuries, but it is likely to be very high for this reason. As ever, the battle was equally decisive strategically. West's army had lost a little under 10% of its strength. Horsley's cavalry was down 7%, but they had acquired thousands of cuirasses between the dead, wounded and surrendered of Duthie's troops. This would give them the option of acting as heavy cavalry in the future should the need arise. In exchange, they had wiped out nearly all of the 74,000+ troops they had fought, as none of the survivors would fight again in the war bar Duthie and the few cuirassiers who made it out of the mob. 37% of the engaging force had fallen, but three divisions were eradicated and remainder of the army had been deprived of its supply base. Anthracite and Windermere had demonstrated that the third and final major pass had also been blocked off. While it would still be possible for the maix est regine to overwhelm and destroy the rebels, Vincent continued to stay put in the Fletta and his reinforcing armies were now increasingly gunshy about making the trip. Vincent to this point had now lost 27.5% of his original force and the rebels had lost only 22.0%, giving the rebels a 10% Hoktikte Score. He had also dropped beneath the million man mark, which he had built his prestige upon. The Nordamerikanske Imperiet to the north east began to see writing on the wall. 18,700 troops under the inexperienced Starr Magnussen were committed to the rebellion, as much as a political gesture as a military one. This increase in total force dropped their loss percentage to 19.0%, meaning that with the political ramifications of the battle, they had gained more troops than they had lost at Windermere. This also bumped their Hoktikte Score to 14%. From here, West would continue to patrol the north. 90,000 infantry still remained from the Army of Regina along with over 27,000 cavalry, plus the 270,000 strong Army of Appalachia moving up in the north. He would next fight at the Battle of Peers. Horsley, however, moved south. Stamnoudus was on the move toward Flettaville and intended to begin beating down Vincent's regulars, but he had no cavalry. West, planning on holding Anthracite anyway, sent Horsley to fill that role. The next battle in the rebellion would be the Battle of Kilborn.